iranians putting faith in hard assets...

The gold merchants were still on strike as of yesterday apparently. The Iranian rial has not devalued in the past in line with the country's high inflation rate. I am optimistic there will be a change to a more intelligent economic policy at some point, and that will benefit our Iranian asset (although everything may look bleak in Iran at the moment). When things get really bad, they will start buying Persian carpets instead of buying dollars, and take those out of the country instead. During the last revolution you had to pay a deposit at the border to take a carpet out of the country, a deposit which you lost if you didn't re-import it! That is what happens when the currency traders rates differ markedly from the Central Bank's dollar selling rate and the Central Bank refuses to sell dollars to all and sundry. The current situation in Iran couldn't be worse from the point of view of the permitting arrangements on our Iranian asset, so any change in policy should benefit us.